Acquisitions Inbound

Picked up a Sega Mega-CD video tape advertisement. Brand new and sealed. Look forward to opening it up, smelling that 90s air and uploading the video to YouTube. Stay tuned for that. I’ll need to upload the Saturn demo VHS tape I have as well.

Also came across a PAL 0 Dreamcast. PAL 0 you say? Yes that’s correct! Not the expected PAL 1 we all see, know and love. Apparently it has a metal heat pipe just like the Japanese early models, which I also happen to own one of. Looking forward to pulling this one apart and seeing what is different on the inside compared to both the Japanese Rev 0 units and the PAL 1 units. It does say on a sticker on the unit itself “MODIFIED CONSOLE, FOR DISPLAY PURPOSES ONLY, NOT SUITABLE FOR HOME USE”. The modem is a blank case. Should be interesting!

I also received the Accolade Dev Cart from over in Germany. Not very functional without anything on the unit or without the software to run it from the PC side – it’s pretty darned cool looking though. I haven’t had a chance to take photos of it yet, but when I do it will be a thing of beauty.

Also fetched an Apple Macintosh LC 475 (Performa 475) to have a play around with. The pizza box has damage to one of the clips on the top, but as a hardware lover, I am not in it for cosmetic looks. Especially with how rare these units have become. One upon a time I gave an LC 475 away to a collector I knew. How we always come to regret the things we do. It is probably locked away in a garage growing fungus on it.

I’ve been selling off some of my Mega Drives the past few weeks. Managed to restore one back to full health too which was most satisfying. One of the Mega Drive 1 units shows some video flicker but warms up and comes good. Reds typically flicker to yellow and back again. I’ve ordered some Sony CXA1145P chips in the hope that they might fix the problem. I guess it could just be a bad solder joint too. We’ll know once I try and fix it and I’ll document it for here as well.

On the topic of things I am waiting for, my sockets for Mega Drive Model 1 overclocking still has not arrived and had to be refunded and reshipped. I am also still waiting on the BA6798S chip to arrive to try and fix my Japanese Saturn motor.

I have also decided that I will attempt to create a Neptune from a 32X and a Mega Drive 2. I realised I have two partially modded Model 2 Mega Drives, so I figure I’ll keep one modded normally with the 50/60Hz switch and NTSC/PAL switch and the other I’ll cram an NTSC 32X into. I noticed that the amount of Mega 32X units has dwindled significantly. Thankfully to do the mod, it can be any region of 32X. The US ones look the be a prime candidate since they always seem to have a massive surplus of them. That and they are uglier than the PAL and Japanese ones.

Sorry about the lack of photos for in this post. Everything I am waiting on hasn’t arrived yet! I haven’t had much time to play around with the consoles I already have as real life commitments (work…) keep getting in the way. Such is life!